As Work Space, Old Post Offices Have a Timeless Allure

In Chicago, 601W bought the old postal structure in May 2016 from a British investor. Since then, workers have been replacing windows, hauling away debris and preparing to install new building systems inside.

The redevelopment will turn former mail-processing areas into uncommon office spaces, taking advantage of expansive spaces with 19-foot-high ceilings, said Brian Whiting, president of Telos Group, a Chicago brokerage firm looking for tenants to fill the building. The biggest floor space stretches 285,000 square feet.

“It’s very simple,” Mr. Whiting said. “We’re building a building to attract a younger work force that is calling for more open, collaborative, neighborhood-feeling space.”

Photo

The lobby of the Old Chicago Main Post Office. The real estate firm 601W Companies is transforming the building into office space.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Photo

The elevator interior.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Photo

Brian Whiting is president of Telos Group, a Chicago brokerage firm looking for tenants to fill the downtown post office.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times

Amenities will include a “Gatsby-esque” lounge, a big gym and a quiet working area modeled after a university library. The former lobby will serve as the main entrance for office workers.

The scale of the property, about three city blocks long, will allow for “environments that smaller buildings can’t possibly do,” Mr. Whiting added. “It literally allows us to create an entire neighborhood in the building, or multiple neighborhoods in the building to give people that work community they’re really looking for.”

Two developers, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, are making a similar bet on the James A. Farley Building in Manhattan, a building completed in 1913 that features a facade with Corinthian-style columns along one side. Across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station, the property will be turned into a train hall named after Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, who died in 2003.

Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road will use the rail capacity that Skanska, the Swedish construction contractor, has been constructing at the site. Vornado and Related will focus on about 588,000 square feet in the building’s second through fifth floors and on bringing in new tenants to retail areas on the first and concourse levels. The Postal Service will retain offices on the third floor.

The prospect of converting the upper-floor mail-processing areas into offices made the Farley property stand out, said Andrew Rosen, a senior vice president at Related. Such spaces are rare in New York, he said, but in demand from technology, media and other companies.

“It’s two full city blocks. It’s up to 200,000 square feet on a floor and a really open space with great light” and transportation links, Mr. Rosen said. “You end up with something that’s very unique.”

Lovett Commercial, a developer in Houston, plans to turn the former Barbara Jordan Post Office near that city’s downtown into a commercial hub as well. Lovett acquired the property, built in 1962 in the Brutalist style, from the Postal Service in 2015.

The building is “sort of a relic of Houston’s golden age,” said Kirby Liu, director of development at Lovett. “That’s a heritage we wanted to preserve. It’s an orientation of the past that we want to bring into the future.”

In a former two-story warehouse on the property, Lovett wants to create spaces for shops, artists and food purveyors on the ground level and office areas geared toward creative companies on the second floor. The old five-story office component is slated for a hotel.

“There’s a lot of quirkiness to the building,” Mr. Liu said. “It’s something that’s both extremely familiar but also extremely alien to most people in Houston, because most never realized how much stuff was behind the curtain.”

One example of that: multiple nuclear fallout shelters in the property.

The Postal Service owned 8,448 properties as of September, according to its 2017 annual report, down about 2 percent from 2011. The post office leases the vast majority of its facilities, a total of 23,184 properties, the annual report said.

Over its last seven fiscal years, the agency has sold an average of 32 properties annually, according to its financial statements and reports. Sales can be contentious. In some cases, communities have fought to ensure buildings remain in public hands and open to serve customers. The agency has also faced criticism for selling buildings with historic elements.

“Places that have a sense of neighborhood usually don’t like it,” said Steve Hutkins, a New York University professor who operates a website, Save the Post Office, that tracks building dispositions and other agency news.

Photo

Workers have been replacing windows, hauling away debris and preparing to install new building systems inside the post office in Chicago.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Photo

The Chicago project is one of several major postal building redevelopments around the country. Others in the works include sites in New York and Houston.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times Photo

Interstate 290 passes through the Old Chicago Main Post Office.Credit
Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times

The Postal Service consolidates and sells property to adapt to business and financial circumstances, including falling mail volume, Kimberly Frum, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an email.

“In some locations, we have excess capacity,” Ms. Frum wrote. “Given our financial condition, selling property in these circumstances is a sound business decision.”

Before any sale, the agency always solicits and considers community input, she added. It also must comply with preservation laws and rules before it can sell historic properties.

Not every postal facility has a second life. The service’s distribution center near downtown Portland, Ore., is slated for demolition under plans by a local economic development agency, Prosper Portland.

The building on the site — a 400,000-square-foot structure built in 1962 — is unable to accommodate local priorities, she said, like developing new housing to meet expected population growth in Portland and creating affordable units in a central location.

“We’re looking a high-density development that necessitates that demolition of the building,” Ms. Harpole said. “It has limited functionality.”